Naming property and council tax

[Jilly]

When does council tax become payable?

 

I would like to establish an address for deliveries etc and so have enquired about address allocation (costs £75 here) but will that make me liable for council tax? It doesn't look likely that we will live on site during the build, but I assume if we do, that does make us liable?

[Mr Punter]

No, being allocated a postal address does not make you liable for Council Tax.

[Ed Davies]

An aside: there are two steps to setting up the address. First is to get it allocated by the council, the £75 bit you mention. The second is to get it activated by the Royal Mail, that's free. The second is well worth doing as soon as you're ready to do stuff on the plot as it'll mean that the address appears in on-line retailer's databases, etc. Handy for deliveries.

 

The downside to activation is that you then get bombarded by TV licensing wanting to know why you haven't got a TV licence yet. At least that gives you a supply of scrap paper on site for days you've forgotten to bring your notebook (except when they use red envelopes, they're harder to write on).

 

AFAIK, council tax is payable from when the house is ready for occupation, whatever that means.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Ed Davies
Spelling

[ProDave]

This is a very grey area and depends where you are.

 

Here we don't have house numbers, just names, the road does not even have a name, so we are "house name, village mane, county, postcode."

 

I have so far refused to pay the £100 to register the address.  The result of that, is the house name is on the councils address database but they refuse to notify the post office unless I pay the £100 fee.  So we are not on the Postcode Address File.  That does not stop post arriving here, and does not stop the council charging us council tax.

 

It might be different if you are in a numbered street with a name and need someone to allocate a house number to you, it might not be so optional then.

 

As to "when" for council tax, that seems very fluid as well.  We have been paying band A council tax for the caravan since we moved in, but the valuer does not seem in a hurry to list the actual house. He was here last week and had a quick look in and decided it was not ready so he will come back in about June for another look. Until then we carry on with band A for the caravan.

[recoveringbuilder]

Must be different in different areas of Scotland, ours was registered with council way back when we started and the council informed the post office, no charge!

but I do agree with @Ed Davies I get a tv licensing letter at least once a month!

[Redoctober]

We were referred to the Royal Mail by the council [ Scottish Borders] when we made an initial approach regarding an address. So we just informed the Royal Mail via their website of our new address. They kept it on file until we informed them that we were ready to move in. Up until that point we just used "plot 1" etc., and all deliveries found their way to the development without any issues.

I informed the council that we were building a new house and would inform them again,  when it was we were intending to move in. They were happy with this and the Council tax didn't kick in until that date arrived.

[Tosh]

To register our address we had to pay £150 to Powys LA via the building control office. This enabled them to inform Royal Mail so it appeared on the Royal Mail database. However Royal Mail would only deliver as long as there was a postbox and they didn't have to come onto site i.e. put themselves at risk. Load of all baloney when you think about all the farms they deliver to around our area that have farm dogs on the loose, heavy machinery on the move constantly, etc.

 

Ridiculous amount of money to pay for this though.

[newhome]

27 minutes ago, Redoctober said:

We were referred to the Royal Mail by the council [ Scottish Borders] when we made an initial approach regarding an address. So we just informed the Royal Mail via their website of our new address. They kept it on file until we informed them that we were ready to move in. Up until that point we just used "plot 1" etc., and all deliveries found their way to the development without any issues.

I informed the council that we were building a new house and would inform them again,  when it was we were intending to move in. They were happy with this and the Council tax didn't kick in until that date arrived.

 

Ironically my address isn't on the council database [Scottish Borders] despite it being them who allocated the address, but they still manage to charge me council tax sadly . I think the council was probably happy with you starting to pay council tax from when you moved in as you got quite a crack on with the build and finished it relatively quickly. They tend to want council tax prior to the house being completed if the build is on a slow burn. Some councils seem to want to charge you before the house is even really habitable. I believe that @joe90 had a bit of a fight with his council over it. 

 

 

[Redoctober]

57 minutes ago, Tosh said:

To register our address we had to pay £150 to Powys LA via the building control office. This enabled them to inform Royal Mail so it appeared on the Royal Mail database. However Royal Mail would only deliver as long as there was a postbox and they didn't have to come onto site i.e. put themselves at risk. Load of all baloney when you think about all the farms they deliver to around our area that have farm dogs on the loose, heavy machinery on the move constantly, etc.

 

Ridiculous amount of money to pay for this though.

 It does seem an unnecessary amount of money as you say. Thankfully ours was free of charge.

As for Royal Mail Posties being put at risk, well what a load of nonsense. We live in a very rural part of the Borders and on one occasion we had a tradesman's dog running about the plot when Postie arrived. His response was to produce a doggie biscuit from his pocket and hand to said dog. Common sense applied and everyone was happy!

[Temp]

The council sent me a letter out of the blue stating that they anticipated our house would be complete for council tax purposes in 30 days. I wrote back stating the date we actually expected it to be completed which I think was about 60 days later than their date. They accepted our word for it. I think our predicted date was close to being right and neither of us did anything about any slight difference.

[Temp]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

I have so far refused to pay the £100 to register the address.  The result of that, is the house name is on the councils address database but they refuse to notify the post office unless I pay the £100 fee.  So we are not on the Postcode Address File.  That does not stop post arriving here, and does not stop the council charging us council tax.

 

Perhaps you could just tell them it's missing :-) You could even send them a copy of your council tax bill as evidence :-)

 

https://www.royalmail.com/personal/receiving-mail/update-your-address

 

Report an incorrect or missing address

 

Report a missing address or a change to your address details here
If you’ve searched for an address and you can’t find it, or you think it's wrong and should be updated, please use the form below to report it to us providing as much detail as you can. Once you’ve submitted the information, it will be passed to our Address Maintenance Team who will handle your enquiry and respond to you by email within two working days. Once changes have been confirmed, updates to our address databases may take up to five working days to come into effect.

All fields marked with an asterisk need to be completed.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Temp

[Temp]

Or see this which suggests a chat to the postman might be enough to get it sorted!

 

https://www.poweredbypaf.com/my-address-is-wrong-missing-does-not-exist-or-is-not-recognised-what-should-i-do-report-it-to-royal-mail/

 

In the case of new developments we’re normally informed that an address is capable of receiving mail by our postmen and women – they capture details of thousands of address changes every year whilst out on their walks.

 

Sometimes though, the householder will know that an address is ready to receive mail or has changed before anyone else does. On these occasions, we recommend telling us directly. Whether for a business or residential address, simply use the short online form on our website to report it to our Address Maintenance Team.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Temp

[ProDave]

8 hours ago, Temp said:

 

Perhaps you could just tell them it's missing :-) You could even send them a copy of your council tax bill as evidence :-)

 

https://www.royalmail.com/personal/receiving-mail/update-your-address

 

Report an incorrect or missing address

 

Report a missing address or a change to your address details here
If you’ve searched for an address and you can’t find it, or you think it's wrong and should be updated, please use the form below to report it to us providing as much detail as you can. Once you’ve submitted the information, it will be passed to our Address Maintenance Team who will handle your enquiry and respond to you by email within two working days. Once changes have been confirmed, updates to our address databases may take up to five working days to come into effect.

All fields marked with an asterisk need to be completed.

 

 

Been round that loop many times.  All that happens is the PO phone the council who say "he hasn't paid to register the address" and they collectively refuse to do anything.  I have lost the will to fight any more and it will just remain unregistered.

[Ed Davies]

My site had, when I bought it, outline planning permission for two houses. At the time the council charge was about £80 for the first house and £40 for each additional house so I paid to register addresses for both. When I had an entrance, fence and postbox I then activated the address for the plot I'm actually building on. If/when I sell the other plot the new owner can change the name (should be free) and activate the other address. I think about half that price would be more reasonable but otherwise all OK.

 

The house I'm renting in the mean time shares its address with the adjoining house (“everybody knows” which is which, etc). Unfortunately, it also shares its name with another house in the same village with a one letter difference in its postcode. Neither are officially registered under that name. When I tried to get this sorted out with the council they wanted to charge me £160 for a new registration on a house which predates the concept of “database” by at least two world wars. Despite my protests that it was just a correction to an obvious misregistration in the past they insisted that was the only way. Nope.

[Jeremy Harris]

There seems to a lot of inconsistency in the way addressing and council tax liability is handled, from one area to another. 

 

Here I managed to get on the address database (after a struggle) by paying a load of money to the council street naming team, then chasing up Royal Mail who initially put us on the database, then removed the address shortly later without telling us, so I had to get it put back on again

 

Council tax was a nightmare.  We had the building site broken into by a lady from the council one evening (she literally climbed over the fence, ignored all the warning signs and peered through the windows, wearing no PPE at all).  She was caught on CCTV, and I only discovered who she was when we received a very stroppy letter from the council accusing me of trying to avoid paying council tax.  I got a lot of useful advice from this forum's predecessor, called the council back and quoted the law to them, and asked them for the name of their employee as I wished to make a complaint to the HSE about her, for breach of site safety rules.  At this point the council very swiftly backtracked, passed me up the chain to someone more senior, who tried to make out that it was a "mistake" (it wasn't, it's standard policy here, I later found out).

 

The useful thing about this debacle was that I discovered that of the house doesn't have a potable water supply, then in law it cannot be classed as a rateable hereditament, and if it isn't a rateable hereditament than it cannot be classed as a habitable dwelling and cannot be put on the valuation list for council tax.  Because the council had really angered me by their underhand actions, I chose to play hard ball, and delay connecting a tested, potable, water supply until we had virtually finished the build.  I would have been quite happy to do this a year or so earlier, but the council's behaviour got my back up.

 

I also removed the implied right of access to all council staff, their contractors, sub-contractors or agents, by sending them a recorded delivery letter giving notice of this and by fitting signs at the site entrance making it clear that entry by any council personnel would be by appointment only.  To the credit of the council they never again tried to gain access to the site, it seems that they did actually take notice of the legal warning (surprised me a bit, given the way they's ignored health and safety legislation).